20 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



Thus it comes to pass, that it were scarcely 

 possible to name a more pathetic symbol of the past 

 than an old garden,* nor a spot which, by its tell-tale 

 shapes, sooner lends itself to our historic sense if we 

 would recall the forms and reconstruct the life of our 

 ancestors. For we have here the very setting of old 

 life the dressed stage of old drama, the scenery of 

 old gallantry. Upon this terrace, in front of these 

 flower-beds with these trees looking on, was fought 

 out the old battle of right and wrong here was 

 enacted the heroic or the shameful deeds, the stirring 

 or the humdrum passages in the lives of so many 

 generations of masters, mistresses, children, and 

 servants, who in far-off times have lived, loved, and 

 died in the grey homestead hard by. " Now they 

 are dead," as Victor Hugo says "they are dead, 

 but the flowers last always." 



Admit, then, that for their secret quality, no less 

 than for their obvious beauty, these old gardens 

 should be treasured. For they are far more than 

 they seem to the casual observer. Like any other 

 piece of historic art, the old garden is only truly 

 intelligible through a clear apprehension of the 

 circumstances which attended its creation. Granted 

 that we possess the ordinary smattering of historical 



* Time does much for a garden. There is a story of an American 

 plutocrat's visit to Oxford. On his tour of the Colleges nothing struck 

 him so much as the velvety turf of some of the quadrangles. He 

 asked for the gardener, and made minute enquiries as to the method 

 of laying down, and maintaining the grass. "That's all, is it?" he 

 exclaimed, when the process had been carefully described. " Yes, 

 sir," replied the gardener with a twinkle in his eye, " That's all, but 

 we generally leave it three or four centuries to settle down ! " 



